Austria’s women lugers ended the single-seater competition in Yanqing yesterday with the most thankless result that is possible at the Olympic Games: Madeleine Egle, Hannah Prock and Lisa Schulte finished fourth to sixth. A cohesive team effort, which is awarded diplomas at the Winter Games, but without a medal.
After four rounds, Egle was almost three tenths of a second behind on the podium, which was occupied by the Germans Natalie Geisenberger (third Olympic victory in a row) and Anna Berreiter as well as the Russian Tatjana Iwanova. “It was a good finish,” Egle tried to emphasize the positive after “Blech”. “I take that with me and say that you have to make fourth place at the Olympics first,” said the 23-year-old, who started the race as second in the overall World Cup as one of the favorites. A fall on Monday, in which she was able to slide back onto the sled, had reduced the chances of the Tyrolean medal to a minimum. After race one she was only 17th. Although Egle was on the hunt to catch up, she made a mistake yesterday in the third round as well. “It was actually crazy that these hackers were still doing so much,” she said. Of course she knew that there would have been more inside.
Steu/Koller strong in training
Prock (22) and Schulte (21) are similarly young as Egle, which means that the ÖRV team can look forward to a bright future – to tomorrow’s team relay. “I’m proud of my two girls,” said Egle. Their classification was correspondingly different. “For me, there were tears of relief that it was done,” said Schulte.
After Yannick Müller’s arm broke in training, Thomas Steu/Lorenz Koller is the only ÖRV doubles player to start the race today (from 1:20 p.m. on ORF 1). Promising: The Austrians set the best time in five out of six training runs.
Source: Nachrichten
